Of Interest

The College Council elections are starting today and I finally found an article in the Record that covers the candidates and their positions. Alas, I haven’t found web sites for the four candidate slates (and it appears that the one that I linked to the other day is actually for the election in some past year. The article notes:

Although neither Dutta nor Haviland has previous experience on CC, they believe that they are qualified to be elected to its highest office: “We’re not so sure CC credentials are necessarily a positive thing,” Dutta said. “If you look at what the CC leadership has accomplished this year, they’ve actually backpedaled more than they’ve progressed. And now, not only are those same CC leaders asking us for a second chance, they’re asking us for a promotion. And what have they accomplished this year?”

Comments:

1) Note that the offices in contention are for College Council Co-Presidents. In our day, the positions were the more hierachical president and vice president.

2) Although I don’t have enough information to thoroughly handicap the race, I would suspect that mixed class tickets have an advantage along with mixed gender tickets. In the old days, I thought that JA candidates had an advantage because freshmen were more likely to vote (mainly, I thought, because the voting was in Baxter and freshmen were more likely to be there while the voting was going in). In any event, now that elections are conducted on-line, this last item may not matter as much, to the extent that it ever did.

3) Another of my memories was the candidate forum that we had in Brooks-Rogers for this election 16 years ago. I am not sure how the order of candidates was decided, but Ken April gave a bravura performance. His delivery was perfectly deadpanned and he managed to make fun of both himself and the entire conceit of student government in a way that was simply hillarious but not at all mean-spirited. At the end, I wanted to vote for them. And it was Carter Zinn’s turn to speak next. Alas, Carter found himself in trouble because he had planned to give a speech which addressed the issue of his and Nicole’s lack of experience on College Council head on by pointing out that they could tackle the issues afresh. He had even planned to make reference to the Zen concept of Beginner’s Mind. Alas, Ken had used a series of Zen jokes and spoofs in his speech a few minutes before.

Carter handled the situation beautifully. I can’t remember the precise rhetorical tricks that he used, but even though his planned speech, if given as was, would have made him look the fool, he managed to get across precisely the point that he was trying to make while simultaneously acknowledging Ken’s humor. I thought then, and still think, that I would be wise to have Carter on my side should I ever need some help with environmental torts, or whatever.